by Ania Ahlborn
He nearly laughed when she uttered his fake given name into the bedroom just as Michael filled the doorframe.
Nearly laughed at how damn perfect it all was.
23
* * *
WHEN MICHAEL FINISHED scrubbing the blood from between the grooves in the kitchen floor, it was dark outside. His knees were raw, his head was throbbing, and he could hardly see past his own weariness. But Misty was still waiting, wrapped in a blanket on the back porch—the blanket he’d slept with since he was a boy.
He walked around the side of the house and stared at the storm doors that led down to the basement. It was what Momma expected, but this time it wasn’t what she’d get. Rather than pulling Misty down those rickety stairs, he retrieved the old, splintered shovel Rebel had made him drag into the woods and tucked it into the blanket like the dead girl’s bedfellow. And then he carried his sister, bare feet bobbing, into the trees, the porch light shining at his back.
He walked in stops and starts for nearly an hour before laying Misty on the crest of their favorite hill. It was high enough to overlook the surrounding peaks and valleys. During the times Michael had been convinced his own days were numbered, he imagined himself being buried in this very spot. It was a peaceful place, far enough from the farmhouse to be free.
He sank the spade into the soft earth, barely holding it together as he went through the motions of digging his sister’s grave. It was only when he realized just how perfect the spot was that he broke down, sobbing against the pain in his shoulders and back, in his hands and his heart.
The sunrise would peek over that valley only a few hours after Misty was in the ground, burning away the hazy purple mist of the night.
It would be what she’d see every morning until the end of time.
• • •
Michael didn’t return home. Instead he spread the blood-soaked blanket over a bed of leaves, lay down, and pulled the corners over his legs and torso like a poor man’s sleeping bag. With one arm outstretched, he buried his fingers in the dirt of Misty’s grave.
When he woke, the sun was high and the heat was stifling. He squinted through the shivering leaves above his head and scowled at the cloudless sky before his eyes stopped on the lump of soil that bulged from the ground beside him. But despite the viselike tightening in his chest, he didn’t cry. If there was a limit to how many tears a human could shed, Michael felt as though he’d reached it.
Standing there, staring down at Misty’s grave, he wondered how old Lauralynn was now. Close to twenty-five, he guessed. Once upon a time, he used to think that she would rush back to their farmhouse in the West Virginian hills as soon as she had the chance. Now he understood why she never had. Lauralynn must have seen it in Momma’s eyes so many years before, the true depth of that frightening hollowness.
Pulling in a breath, he tried to steady himself. It was only after he turned in search of a few downed branches to fashion a cross that he realized he was covered in Misty’s blood. Had it been anyone else’s, he would have pulled off his shirt and buried it. But the rust-colored stain that stretched from the top of his chest to the knees of his jeans made him feel closer to her. It was the last piece of her that he’d ever have.
He plucked a couple of average-size branches from the ground and stripped them of their bark, exposing clean, white wood beneath. Lashing the cross together with those same strips, he pushed the poor-man’s cross into the soil at the head of the grave. He’d make a more permanent marker in the basement later, one that wouldn’t break apart in the wind or get washed away in the rain. But for now, this would do.
Michael started to make his way down the hill, back to the farmhouse that stood lonely and secluded in the distance. And as he dragged his feet along the ground, he was struck by the fact that he didn’t feel the hate or anger he knew should have been there. All he felt was guilt, because he had failed at the only job he truly had—nobody had assigned it to him, but it was one he had taken on himself. He had spent years satiating Momma’s thirst, had gone through his entire life doing what Reb told him. All to be a good brother and son. To avoid abandonment in the woods. To keep Misty safe.
Except Misty had never really been safe. Not until now.
• • •
When the farmhouse finally came into view, Michael could see Wade and Momma sitting on the back porch. Neither one of them spoke as he shuffled through the backyard and up the steps. It was as though they were unaware of where he’d been and what he’d been doing, as though they were blind to the blood that covered him from his head to his knees. They simply let him duck inside the house, go upstairs, and close his bedroom door behind him.
The day wore on into night, Michael drowning the memory of the previous day’s events in a dreamless sleep. His hands clung to the stiff fabric of his blood-soaked shirt as he tossed around on his squalid mattress. Three words rolled through his head on a loop: Misty is gone.
When Michael woke, Rebel was leaning against the jamb of the bedroom door, cleaning his nails with his switchblade. Seeing Michael stir, Reb looked up from his hands and smirked.
“You look like an axe murderer, brother,” he said. “Like a goddamn horror movie, them elevators bleedin’ into the hotel lobby. Why don’t you get yourself cleaned up?”
Michael looked down at himself. Dried blood crusted his arms, some of which had come off in patchy dandruff-like flakes. It blotted his mattress like burgundy snow. His hair was clumped together at the ends, the dried tips so hard that they were needle-sharp.
“Hurry up,” Reb said. “I don’t wanna wait around all day.”
Michael blinked up at him, understanding what Rebel was saying yet not wanting to process the words. Reb intended to drag Michael into town. Despite what had happened, Reb was still going to force him into the Delta. Michael was going to be made to ride alongside his brother all the way to the Dervish, as though nothing had happened.
“You gotta be kiddin’.” He heard the words leave his mouth, but they felt detached, as though they were coming from another Michael just behind him. A more rebellious doppelganger that hadn’t existed before now.
Ray cocked an eyebrow, then went back to his manicure. “Do I look like I’m kiddin’?”
Michael shook his head, not in reply to Reb’s question, but in response to the whole situation. It was as though Rebel hadn’t been the slightest bit affected by Misty’s death. Of course not.
A rush of anger spiked Michael’s blood. What did Reb expect was going to happen—that they were going to run off to the Dervish so he could screw Lucy, so that Michael could pretend everything was all right?
“Don’t you even care?” His fingers shook as they took hold of the lumpy mattress beneath him.
Reb glanced up from his nails and gave an easy shrug. “Sure I do,” he said. “Because who’s gonna finish readin’ Winnie the Pooh?”
Michael stared at his last remaining sibling, not understanding. He was ready to tell Rebel where to put his stupid plans and his weird riddles when a single thought stopped him short: Alice. If Michael played along, he could at least warn her. Then Alice would have a fighting chance. But if Michael blew up and told Rebel to go fuck himself, Reb would get aggressive. In Reb’s eyes, Alice was Michael’s girl, and what better way to get even than to hurt her? Michael couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t.
Michael got to his feet, but he didn’t have the strength to feign ambivalence. “You’re a goddamn psycho,” he said, brushing past him on the way to the bathroom.
“You and me both, brother,” Reb murmured beneath his breath. Surprisingly, that was all he said.
• • •
The car ride into town felt like the longest Michael had ever taken. He sat in the Olds with his hands in his lap, his T-shirt sopping up the water that dripped from his wet hair. He didn’t speak or look out the window. He only stared at the now-clean skin of his hands and arms, replaying the way Misty’s blood had fanned out across t
he kitchen floor.
“She wasn’t your sister anymore,” Reb explained. “It wasn’t her. She was, like, possessed, you know? Like that movie about that kid where her head spun around and she floated up to the ceilin’ and all.” He paused, as if contemplating the ridiculousness of his own statement, before continuing on. “You didn’t see that flick, did ya? Good movie. Real cool. Anyway, look at the bright side. Now there ain’t nobody to make you feel guilty about gettin’ with another girl.”
Michael glared down at his hands and held his tongue. It was safer that way. Not responding meant not running the risk of saying something wrong, which would send Reb over the edge.
“And you didn’t bring the record,” Reb noticed. Michael had left it in Rebel’s car after their last ride, but Reb had brought it upstairs to him to make sure Alice was still on Michael’s mind. “Either you’ve changed your mind about breakin’ it off or it’s somethin’ else,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw Reb peering at the road. Reb looked more thoughtful than Michael remembered seeing him before. Finally, Rebel looked back at his brother, and Michael consciously avoided his gaze. “Nah,” Reb said. “It’s somethin’ else. You’re distracted. Boohooing about Misty. You just forgot it at home.”
“Then maybe we should go back and get it,” Michael suggested, unable to help himself.
Ray considered it, then shook his head with a look of indifference. “It don’t matter,” he said.
“Why?”
“For you, nothin’ matters,” Reb explained. “You gotta have free will or some guts for shit to matter, and you don’t got neither. I’m the one who decides what matters and what don’t . . . and Alice, she matters. She matters a lot.”
Michael pulled into himself, not wanting to talk anymore.
Free will—he supposed he had it, but Reb was right: you had to have guts to use it. Despite his anger, there was still that underlying fear of being alone in the woods. Of not knowing whether to go right or left. Of listening to the birds settling in for the night and the whisper of crickets rising up around him. A constant chirp so loud and repetitive it could drive a man crazy if he wasn’t already mad. But Michael’s fear of being driven into the wilderness wasn’t enough to keep him in check. Not anymore. If he hadn’t ever met Alice, he would have nothing to lose. But Alice was there, bright and vivid in Michael’s mind, as though Rebel had known all along that he’d need an extra angle, another way to play the situation to his advantage. Michael pressed his palms together as if in prayer, squeezing them between his knees.
“You got somethin’ to say?” Reb asked.
Michael sucked his lips in and bit down, holding fast to his silence.
“I get it—you miss your precious sister. But at least now we’ve got somethin’ in common.” He turned his head to give Michael a hard look. The emotion that glinted in his eyes was completely alien—empty yet so full of rage that Michael couldn’t grasp exactly what it was he was seeing. A body without a soul. A husk that used to be a person but was now nothing but a vessel of hate.
But losing a sister to distance wasn’t the same as losing a sister to death. If Rebel wanted to, he could pack up his things and drive out to North Carolina, he could go see . . .
Michael blinked. It was the perfect solution, a perfect way to get Reb as far away from Alice as possible.
“Let’s go see Lauralynn,” he said, giving his brother a hopeful look. “Let’s drive out to North Carolina, right now, the both of us.”
Reb gave a bitter laugh. “Yeah? You wanna see the old-as-shit spinster and the crazy fuckin’ army vet?”
Michael frowned at Reb’s response. For once, he had hoped to see a spark of something other than anger in his sibling’s eyes, but the mention of Lauralynn only made Rebel look all the more resentful.
“You know that old fucker used to rape Claudine when she was a kid, right? Remember when they came to visit and brought Lauralynn and Misty them ugly dresses? The time Grandma Jean smacked me in the mouth and chipped my front tooth with her ugly old ring?”
Michael nodded.
“I saw the old bastard sittin’ out on the porch with LL; had his hand up her skirt, and it wasn’t coming back down anytime soon either. Shit like that’s generational, born into the family like them diseases they talk about on the TV. Like cancer.” Reb went quiet for a moment, then took a breath before muttering a few more words to himself. “Probably better the way it happened for her.”
Michael didn’t understand what Rebel meant by that last part, but he was too distracted by the insightfulness to question it. He finally looked out the window, wondering if it could be true—he knew Momma had lived through her own personal hell as a girl, but that? Was that why she was so angry, so hungry for blood? The similarities between the girls and Misty had struck him more than a few times—pale skin, strawberry-blond hair. If they appeared to be like Misty . . . maybe that’s what Momma had looked like when she was younger too? Maybe Momma wasn’t picking those girls because they looked like her daughter, but because she saw something of herself in them. Perhaps killing them was the only way she knew how to quench her anger, how to sequester her pain.
Rebel eased the Delta into the Dervish parking lot and pulled the brake. Michael’s eyes snapped to the sherbet-colored record store ahead of them. His stomach pitched at the sight of it, and for a second he was sure he was going to be sick. He thought about rushing inside and pulling Alice into the storeroom. He’d reveal just enough to wind her up, get her good and scared. He’d tell her to get as far away from Dahlia as she could possibly go. It would have been the perfect excuse to finally start her life in a place that was deserving of such a girl. But rather than shoving open his door and bolting across the sizzling pavement, Michael was overwhelmed with conflicting emotions, not knowing whether he should laugh or scream.
Because it suddenly all made sense. Momma was the victim, and in his mind that bound him to her just as it had bound him to Misty. The Morrows had taken him in, had fed him and given him a place to live. They had saved him when his real parents had abandoned him. Momma had killed Misty to protect him.
Michael’s breath caught in his throat. His head spun, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Everything that the Morrows had done had been born of pain, nothing but festering wounds, people trying to set the world right. His conscience wouldn’t let him abandon them. His mind wouldn’t ever let him disconnect.
“Are you comin’ or what?” Reb asked, but he didn’t bother waiting for an answer. Waving his hand at Michael in dismissal, he murmured a “Whatever” and climbed out of the car.
Michael was trapped.
He could have run after what happened to Misty—before Rebel had told him about Momma, before he could process the fact that her death was for him. But there was Alice to think about.
He could have told Alice everything, but it was too risky. If Reb found out, he’d have to kill her to protect the family. Because despite the twisted darkness that made them who they were, as far as Reb was concerned, the Morrows stuck together. Everything they did was for each other.
Which was why they would never let him go. No matter what opportunity arose, there would always be something . . . either guilt or fear, something to trap him, to keep him in his place.
He jumped at the sudden tap on the passenger door. Alice stood in the glaring sun, bent at the waist, looking through the open window.
“Hey,” she said with a smile, but it faded fast. She held something in her hands—a folded sheet of paper. Sliding a pair of sunglasses down her nose to get a better look at him, she plucked them from her face when she caught sight of his dismay. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m all right, I just . . .” He shielded his eyes from the sun, hoping it would also hide some of the emotion on his face. “It’s been a bad few days.”
Alice frowned and crouched next to the car, her arms folding across the ledge of the open window. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know ho
w that can be. You want to come in?” She motioned to the Dervish behind her. “We’ve got the air cranked. It’s like Antarctica in there. I’ll let you borrow my sweater, and maybe a towel for that hair.” She tried at a smile but came up short when Michael declined the invitation with a faint shake of his head. “You sure?” she asked. “I don’t want to leave you out here by yourself.”
“It’s okay,” he assured her, but Alice wasn’t convinced. Her spearmint scent mingled with the smell of old car and worn leather.
“It’s not okay,” she countered. “What happened?”
He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eyes, didn’t want to catch her gaze if all he was going to do was lie. “Just trouble at home,” he murmured. “I’ve been thinkin’ . . . you should do it.”
“Do what?” she asked, giving him a curious glance.
“Get out of Dahlia, do somethin’ better.”
Alice rolled her eyes a little, as though the suggestion was ridiculous, but a faint grin graced her lips. “Yeah? Just pack up and go?”
Michael nodded. “Just go. I want you to go. You can’t stay here, not anymore.”
“Wish it were that easy,” she said, casting a reproachful glance at the store behind her.
“What’s so hard about it?” Michael asked. “If you can find a job here, you can find one anywhere. A better job. At the newspaper, like you want. Drawin’ comics . . . not wastin’ away.”
“Yeah, but what about Lucy?”
Michael shrugged, not getting what Lucy had to do with anything.
“We’ve got an apartment together,” Alice explained. “I can’t just bail on her. We’ve got rent to split.”
“Take her with you.”
She laughed, as though the simplicity of the suggestion struck her as particularly funny. “Just like that, huh? Forget the lease. Forget that we pretty much single-handedly run the Dervish.”
“But what about the future?” Michael glowered at the frayed denim stretched tight across his knees. “You’re better than this.”